Starbucks Forgets That Whole Irish Independence Thing, Asks Country About Its British Pride

Even if Starbucks’ Ireland Twitter account only has 2,000 followers, it probably should’ve thought a bit harder before asking those followers how it feels to be British. You know, since Ireland’s a free and independent republic that is most definitely not part of the United Kingdom anymore.

First and foremost we apologise to our Irish customers for the mistake made on Twitter this afternoon. The tweet, which was only meant to be sent to our British Twitter followers as part of the diamond jubilee celebrations, was erroneously posted to our Irish Twitter page. We apologise to all our customers and followers on Twitter in Ireland and hope that they will forgive our mistake.

Starbucks isn’t the only big company to rub the Hibernians the wrong way recently. Urban Outfitters pulled a few T-shirts it was selling around St. Patrick’s Day, after complaints that they depicted the Irish in an unflattering light.

Then there was Nike’s “Black and Tan” sneaker, also released near St. Patrick’s Day, which shared a name with both a beverage and, unfortunately, a violent British paramilitary unit blamed for atrocities against Catholics during the Irish war of independence.

No it’s not. Words and phrases evolve throughout time. The Nike shoe was in an obvious reference to the color, and an allusion the alcoholic drink. It just so happened that the drink is named in reference again to the color, but also the violent paramilitary group.

If we took your advice there’d be few phrases we could use, but keep playing PC police because it makes you feel superior.

Words and phrases evolve over time, but not at the same rates to all people. To say “It’s a harmless phrase to us, why should you be offended by it?” is being pretty damn insensitive and self-centered.

Oh wait, I forgot that this is America, and being insensitive and self-centered is kind of our thing.

So you’ve never said the phrase “oh my god”? Because there are literally millions, if not billions of people in the world that would be offended by you saying that. If you never said a phrase that did not offend SOMEONE then you would be stuck without any popular lexicon.

But again, go around feeling better about yourself for policing others, just know you’re hypocrite that’s not actually doing any good towards social justice or equality, sorry.

I’ll just point out that even if it had been intended solely for those customers in the UK, it would have still been offensive. Just ask any Welshman/woman (who are English as Wales is part of the UK but most assuredly do not approve of being called British).

You got that exactly backwards. The Welsh are British, but they’re not English.

England (thus, the English), Wales (Welsh, definitely not English), and Scotland (Scottish, natch) are the separate entities which make up the island of Great Britain (thus the English, Welsh, and Scottish are all British), which along with Northern Ireland make up the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

I fell into that when I was touring back in high school. The train was going from Edinburgh to London. I remarked that it was nice to see the English countryside.
“You’re in Scotland, lad!”
Then I put both feet in my mouth: “Oh sorry. Should I have said the British countryside?”
“THIS IS SCOTLAND LAD!!! WE SCOTS ARE VERY PROUD OF OUR HERITAGE!!!”

As soon as they realized the mistake, they should have re-posted the exact same message on their twitter accounts for other countries. That way, it’d look more like a twitter-account mistake. “Oops, we accidentally sent this message to all countries”

I find that a lot of Americans don’t understand what the nuances are between the “UK” vs. “Great Britain” vs. Ireland vs. etc. Maybe it’s because the culture doesn’t put much emphasis on geography. Maybe I could blame the public schools? I don’t know…

I would say that there are probably just as many Brits who don’t understand the nuances between CONUS, DC, unincorporated organized territories like Guam and Puerto Rico, and unincorporated unorganized territories like American Samoa. I think all countries have nuances about their political subdivisions and sovereign states that are often misunderstood by people outside that country. And I don’t think it’s necessarily the fault of public school.

I consider myself relatively smart on international things, but I couldn’t care less about the difference between the UK and Great Britain. It seems like a legal accident that there even is a difference – Northern Ireland is obviously linked to that nation, and I can’t imagine it’s all that common to need to refer to the island itself, but as a political entity.

On the other hand, as someone working in the American office of a British company, the English are completely baffled by our St. Patrick’s day celebrations, especially the whole green food thing. My English boss completely *did not understand* why everyone was in the kitchen eating green bagels when he was trying to call a meeting.

The big island shaped like a backwards UKP Â£ sign – that’s “Great Britain”. The remaining land masses nearby are the “British Isles” and other external places like The Falklands are part of the entire “United Kingdom” which actually encompasses pretty much everything.

In the big land mass of Great Britain are Scotland and Wales and England. These are separate countries – part of Britain and part of the United Kingdom but separate countries.

At the top of the land mass to the left is “Northern Ireland” and these people see themselves as “British”. The rest is the Republic of Ireland – the Irish.

Now the easy part to remember for Mercia folk – only one of these countries is English. Guess which one.

While I’m at it since this has actually come up – Mexicans are North American.

I live in Dublin, and even though this has made limited news here yesterday, nobody’s giving a damn. In worst of times, the reaction would be something like “Oh feck Starbucks. Let’s go have a pint.” These days, however, the entire country is excited about the upcoming Euro 2012 football championship, and everything else is being overlooked.

Fubish says: I don't know anything about it, but it seems to me...says: